


shattered

by fluffysfics



Series: rewriting history [7]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Agent O - Freeform, Angst, F/M, but I swear the next one will be out tomorrow, chameleon arch shenanigans, kinda cliffhanger ending, mild depictions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:02:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28509387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffysfics/pseuds/fluffysfics
Summary: Agent O goes back to his childhood home with the Doctor.Things do not go to plan.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Series: rewriting history [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2064198
Comments: 14
Kudos: 65





	shattered

They leave the rest of the Doctor’s companions in their rooms for this trip. O doesn’t want to subject them to his family. He doesn’t much want to subject the Doctor to his family, either, but she has been insisting since he woke up in her arms this morning. 

Something in the back of his head is unusually nervous about this whole thing. 

They aren’t normal nerves, either; it’s the sort of feeling that makes his tongue taste metallic and sets his teeth on edge with the need to _run_. It’s bizarre, and it’s kind of terrifying that his own parents can elicit this reaction from him. 

But he knows that he needs to do this, needs to confront his past before he can properly face his future. 

He’s pretty sure that’s what he needs, at least. 

It’s too late to back out now. 

The Doctor catches him staring mutinously a flashing button on the TARDIS console, and slips her arm around his waist. “Hey,” she says. “No matter what happens in there, I’ve got you.” 

“I know.” O leans back into her touch, appreciative, and kisses her warmly on the cheek. Her reassurance really does help, just a little bit. “Thank you.” 

“‘S alright.” She squeezes him comfortingly, then steps away and slides a keyboard around the console in his direction. “Stick your parents’ address in here, yeah? Then we’ll head off.” 

O nods, and looks at the keyboard, and falters. He can’t remember their address. The address he lived at for most of his childhood. He bites his lip, chewing at the inside almost hard enough to make it bleed, and then _finally_ his brain throws up a London address. Relaxing just a little, he types it into the keyboard, and the Doctor beams over at him. 

“Good. Thank you. Don’t look so nervous! It’s just your parents. Least you’re not an Atarian- they have to defeat their parents in hand-to-hand combat six months after birth, or else they get eaten.” 

“Um,” O says, and then the Doctor pulls the lever that makes the whole room shake and spin. He grabs the console, just about managing to stay on his feet as she steers them wildly through the time vortex. They land with a bump that shakes his spine, and he slowly straightens up, pressing a hand to his racing heart. He feels his pendant from the Doctor hanging next to it, and gives it a gentle rub for reassurance. “Okay. Let’s go.” 

The Doctor nods, motioning for him to head out first. O steps up to the door of the TARDIS. His heart is hammering in his ears, and his hand is shaking when he pushes the door open. For a second, every nerve in his body screams at him to _turn around now_ , but he ignores the urge. It’s stupid, surely. 

O walks out of the TARDIS, and finds himself in front of the plain red door of a perfectly ordinary looking flat. He knocks. 

It’s almost a relief when no one answers. Glancing back at the Doctor, he offers her a small, sheepish smile. “Guess they aren’t in,” he says softly, wondering if they can get away with just leaving now. 

“You don’t have a key?” The Doctor tilts her head, looking a little surprised. 

“Um.” O pats his pockets. He hasn’t worn these trousers in a while, but the TARDIS has a habit of transferring the contents of his pockets between anything he wears. He doesn’t remember a key, but- but oh, there it is. “I guess I do.” 

The Doctor just hums, and he steps forward, inserting the key into the lock. It turns easily, the door swinging gently open. O steps into the hallway of the flat, glancing around. “Mum? Dad?” 

It’s eerily quiet in here. And _cold_ , the sort of chill a house acquires when the heating hasn’t been on for months. “Doctor,” he says nervously. “Something’s wrong.” 

“What?” She’s by his side in an instant, looking around. She sniffs the air. “Oh, lovely. _Dust_. Lots of dust. Your parents are bad at cleaning.” 

“They’re not,” O says instinctively. At least, he doesn’t think they are. He remembers the inside of his home- he remembers the decorations. The view out of the window, to the- to- why is everything _red_? 

Shaking his head, he pushes open the nearest door. This should be the living room. 

It’s _a_ living room, for sure. Cold and abandoned, except for some papers scattered over the floor, haphazard, as if someone had left in a rush. Or _angrily_. Nervous dread crawling up his guts, O bends to pick one of them up. 

It’s an MI6 file, for a case he’d worked on several years back. Looking around, _all_ of the papers are MI6 files. His files. 

“That’s not- that shouldn’t be- these can’t be here,” he murmurs, sitting down hard on the edge of the sofa. His head hurts. His head _really_ hurts. “Doctor, what’s going on?” 

“I don’t know.” She sounds wary. Suspicious. “I was gonna ask you the same thing.” 

“I don’t know either,” O says weakly. He looks up at her, fear written all over his face. “They should be here. This is their flat, I remember it. I grew up here.” 

The Doctor seems to soften a little. “Don’t be scared. We’ll- we’ll figure this out, O. We’ll find them.” 

He trusts her. He trusts her _completely_. But he’s still scared. Letting out a shaky sigh, O stands back up. The Doctor bends down, preoccupies herself with reading through some of the case files on the floor. 

“These are your cases? I- did you live with your parents, when you worked at MI6?” 

“Yeah, they’re mine. But...no. No, I didn’t,” O says softly. He moved out. He remembers moving out, getting his own new place, and the address was- it was—

He can’t remember. _Why_ can’t he remember? Why is this flat the only place in London that he seems to know?

He steps out of the living room as if in a dream, moving through the house. There’s a kitchen- well taken care of, but as dusty as everything else in the flat. It doesn’t smell like it should, and when he opens up a cupboard, he’s met with barren emptiness, not shelves of spices and barely-used kitchen gadgets. 

The master bedroom is at the back of the flat, he remembers. Perhaps there will be a clue in there as to where his parents have gone. 

Wandering towards it, he stares down the door, this one painted purple. Odd, that, he thinks. Purple has always been his favourite, not his parents’. So why is—

“O?” He pauses as he hears the Doctor’s voice, his hand on the doorknob. “Some of these files are about me.” 

“I, um...yeah, I’m pretty sure I kept some papers on you,” O says, not liking her tone of voice at all. She sounds almost as worried as he feels. 

“You shouldn’t know half of this stuff,” the Doctor says softly. “Not even UNIT knew most of this. Only one person could—“ 

Only half-listening, O turns the doorknob of the master bedroom, which gives way with a shove and a slightly-too-loud click. 

Several things happen in very quick succession. 

Something beeps, and all of a sudden there’s a red dot in the centre of his chest. 

The Doctor drops the papers in her hands, flinging herself towards him and trying to push him aside. 

And he fights her. Because something in his brain has just informed him that this is a laser strong enough to mortally injure even a Time Lord, and there is only one person in the universe that this laser is DNA-coded not to kill instantly. There is one small chance at both of them surviving this trap. And he knows this because- because—

O shoves the Doctor hard, sending her sprawling to the floor, and dives forward. His timing can’t be even a millisecond off, and he doesn’t even know _how_ he knows that. 

The laser fires, scorching a ring through his shirt. He slumps to the floor, groaning. Something’s _in_ his chest- a hole, for one thing, and...and shards of glass. 

“Doctor,” he mumbles. “Doctor, I’m sorry. I love you. I do.” The words spill out of him in terrified instinct. He doesn’t know why he just did what he did. He doesn’t know how he knows that _he_ set this trap up, just in case, months and months ago- when things were _so_ different. 

His vision is flickering at the edges, and maybe it’s a hallucination, but something gold is curling up from the broken pendant that took the brunt of the laser blast. His ears are full of whispers, overwhelming him, and yet somehow- somehow—

Everything makes sense. O closes his eyes, lets the gold light overwhelm him, flow through him, burn him right down to the core of his being. He lets himself go, his memories washed back into the corner of his brain that had fabricated them in the first place. _That’s_ why they’d always felt so wrong; they were never real at all. 

For a moment, he feels peace. 

And then the Doctor groans, and an icy chill floods the Master, chasing out every last drop of residual tingling warmth. 

_He has ruined everything_. 

“Who are you?” Her voice is weak; as he sits up, he can see that she’s hit her head against the wall. Nothing serious, but she’ll be dazed for a good few minutes. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. Saying his name feels like too much right now. Tears fill his eyes, spill down his cheeks- the Doctor had loved O, and he had tried so desperately to give her what she wanted. Who she’d wanted. O was more deserving of life than him. “I’m sorry. You can put me back if you want- please. Please, put me back. Let me be him again. You deserve better than me.” 

“Who _are_ you?” The Doctor repeats the question with a little more bite, struggling to sit up properly, only to moan in pain and slump back against the wall. 

“I’m-“ The Master chokes on his own name again. He hasn’t used it in so long now; it barely feels like his own. His hearts ache, and he- oh. Oh, they _really_ ache. He looks numbly down at his chest. The glass of the Doctor’s gift to him is still embedded deep in his flesh, even as golden sparks dance and knit his skin back together. 

Something’s not quite right, though. Something hurts, the pain growing stronger with each throb of his hearts. Fuck. 

“I love you, Theta,” the Master murmurs, half-delirious with sudden agony and only vaguely aware of how mad it is that those words _always_ come to mind in situations like this, and then he collapses into the Doctor’s lap, shattered. 

He hears one final, soft word from her lips before he slips into unconsciousness. 

“Koschei?” 

**Author's Note:**

> I’m So Sorry
> 
> the next part of this series is already written and I promise I’ll post it tomorrow, I won’t leave you hanging on this note for too long!! as ever, I absolutely live for reading your comments on these fics, I appreciate them all so much <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Thirteenth and O fanart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28944966) by [Oksenia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oksenia/pseuds/Oksenia)




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